Welsh Journals

The Adolescent and the Churches. By Jenkin James, M.A., Secretary to the Council of the University of Wales. I APPROACH this subject as a lay member of the Church, who has had some experience in the administration of education, and who is convinced that the proper training and nurture of the adolescent is one of the most pressing needs of our time, and one which vitally concerns the Christian Church. First of all let me refer to an aspect of the matter which appears to me to be fundamental, but which, nevertheless, is apt to be overlooked. Just as the Christian Church to-day could not by any effort of her own, make up for the lack of a complete State system of primary education, so likewise by no effort, however well-meaning and however well-directed, is it possible for the Church to make up for the lack of a State system of continued education covering the period from 14 to 18. Universal education is essentially a Christian idea, and as such must be on the programme of every Christian Church. In spite of many back-slidings and perversions and compromises, Christianity has always been the great emancipator, the great protest against all exploitation of human life. Therefore, how- ever unpopular the doctrine may be at the pre- sent moment, and however unpalatable, the Christian Church, in so far as it is Christian, must not rest until those facilities and oppor- tunities which were foreshadowed by the Educa- tion Act of 1918, have been finally secured for the young people of this country. Personally, I cannot help thinking that had there been a Federation of British Churches as active in support of that great Act as the Federation of British Industries was against it, the vital clauses of the Act would not have been shelved so easily, and the educational outlook to-day would be much brighter than it is. Now what is the duty of the Christian Church towards the adolescent? In the first place, of course, she must understand him. It is of no use the Church approaching him as if he were an adult, and in practice, if not! in theory, saying to the growing boy and girl, Except ye become as grown men and women, ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Much of our trouble with young people, and our complaints about their apathy and indifference, arise from sheer lack of imagination and sympathy and under- standing. We have assumed, stupidly and ignorantly assumed, that adult interests, adult ways of looking at things, adult rules of con- duct, must be a standard for all, and we have aimed at producing conformity more than we have aimed at development. Now the period from 14 to 18, as is well known, is a time of great emotional change, a time of spiritual storm and stress. In a word, there occurs during this period a transformation of the mental as well as of the physical organism more profound than any other between birth and death. New kinds of sensation and of emotion, new modes of thought, new attitudes of will, new meanings in life, new problems of duty, new kinds of temptation, new mysteries in reli- gion­-all these come in a flood over the young adolescent. And yet this is the very time at which his education by the State ceases, and the very period at which, speaking generally, the Churches find it convenient to ignore him or to take him for granted The Church stands for religion, and its primary function is to teach religion but in order to do that effectively the Church must not only know the religion which it is her function to teach, she must also know the adolescent. And my point is that at the most critical stage in his growth, when new powers and faculties are coming to the birth within him, the Churches (at any rate in Wales) have tended to look upon him not as what he is-sensitive, impressionable, adventurous, critical,-but as a little adult. They have tried to foist an adult religion upon him. The inevitable result, of course, has been that they have failed. The adolescent has turned rebellious, and has found his real interests and his real life elsewhere. In a word the adolescent yearns for reality, i.e., for what is reality to him, and the Church confronts him with what appears to him to be sheer formalism and make-believe. Now if the Church is going to teach religion to the adolescent, she can only do so by present- ing it not as a creed, or a mystery, but first and foremost as a way of life, and as a way of life which does no violence to, but rather brings to their true fruition the deepest instincts of his nature. Fortunately the function of the Church is not to make a non-religious or irreligious being into a religious one. The normal adoles- cent is religious by nature. It is the business of the Church to make him' Christian, to get him to accept the Christian standard of values and to adopt the Christian way of life. But she errs greatly if she thinks that this can be done by mere teaching or by any scheme of instruction whatsoever. For it implies ultimately that the whole of the environment must be attended to, inasmuch as the education of the young, for weal or for woe, goes forward through everything with which he comes into contact. Food, sani- tary conditions, contact with nature, with books, with newspapers, with pictures, the tone of family life, the conditions of employment, the principles that actually control the conduct of those about him-all these must be taken into account by the Christian educator; otherwise, however well-adapted his scheme of instruction